


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (season 2)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-15 20:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16940454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: I have been writing a lot of meta for a long-ass time on Tumblr.





	1. I’m really quite fond of Dean’s season 2 gay panic

I mean he’s out there having the worst year of his life so far, but at least he’s starting to figure out who he is a teeny weeny bit more. Probably because he’s too stressed to bottle down the gay panic like normal along with everything else, but you know. Gets the job done.

(All transcripts as usual grabbed from [here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supernaturalwiki.com%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DCategory%3ATranscripts&t=MGViZDgwNmI2N2QxODRmM2ZmMWYyYjI1YTUzMjM3MTExODA5MTM1OCxNT1d1ZHhleg%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F146708762873%2Felizabethrobertajones-im-really-quite-fond-of&m=1))

Watching 2x02 last night though, and then scanning ahead on the episode list, I got really mournful just about how, like, the whole gay panic thing shakes out in this season… 

I mean the obvious is here in 2x11:

 

> DEAN  
>  Of course, the most troubling question is why do these people assume we’re gay?
> 
> SAM  
>  Well, you are kinda butch. Probably think you’re overcompensating. 
> 
> DEAN  
>  (mocking a laugh)  
>  Right.

(my 2x11 tag is probably half analysis of those 3 lines of dialogue and Dean’s subsequent overcompensating :P) 

which is why I’d even call this his gay panic season in the first place (And I feel like you have to get maybe as far as Carver era before you can start interpreting that he begins to seem on a path to understanding himself as bi/being remotely comfortable with it) 

But to go back to 2x02, since that’s the one I just watched and it’s following me around today like that creepy ass clown, there’s a couple of things in it sticking with me. 

One is obviously the Ash vs Jo side of things that I don’t want to get loads into, but they’re both at the very least shown both making a serious impression on Dean (while Sam hangs back and laughs - it’s not like since there’s 2 new side characters, they get assigned one each to Sam and Dean or something, they’re both kind of connected to Dean). Since I’ve also just wandered through season 8, what’s sticking out to me is Dean turning Jo down after already half-heartedly bottling out of hitting on her earlier in the episode:

 

> DEAN  
>  Hmm. Can I be honest with you? See, normally I’d be hitting on you so fast it’d make your head spin. But, uh, these days… I don’t know.
> 
> JO  
>  Wrong place, wrong time? 
> 
> DEAN  
>  Yeah.
> 
> JO  
>  It’s okay, I get it.

and in my head I’m comparing it to 8x14:

 

> DEAN  
>  I can’t.
> 
> ELLIE  
>  What? Okay. Uh, embarrassing.
> 
> DEAN  
>  Oh, no, no, no. No, I want to. [Chuckles.] Believe me.
> 
> ELLIE  
>  No, it’s okay – you don’t. I guess I’m gonna…
> 
> DEAN  
>  Ellie, um… Rain check?

In both cases I do kind of see it more as Dean just being generally fucked up (the state he’s in over John’s death speaks for itself) but in both instances I think motivations aside it just gives a moment where you’re forced to evaluate how Dean’s acting when it comes to hook ups, and it’s asking for reflection on it. (I said 2x02 speaks for itself, but I still can’t get past the Ellie thing happening right after Aaron :P) Since it’s such early days all it has to do is ask you to re-evaluate Dean’s season 1 persona, and I think a lot of his stuff in season 2 from several directions is asking you to do that.

The other thing takes a bit more of a run up, but as long as you hold in mind that I feel like season 2 on Dean’s side for most his emotional arc stuff is all heading to 2x20 (What Is And What Should Never Be) the entire time, I hope you can follow my train of thought.

There’s this conversation with the funfair owner in 2x02:

 

> MR. COOPER  
>  You see, this place, it’s a refuge for outcasts. Always has been. For folks that don’t fit in nowhere else. But you two? You should go to school. Find a couple of girls. Have two point five kids. Live regular. 
> 
> DEAN is about to say something, but SAM leans forward, eyes serious.
> 
> SAM  
>  Sir? We don’t want to go to school. And we don’t want regular. We want this. 
> 
> DEAN looks at SAM.

I think I talked in my original rewatch notes on this or at least scenarios like it last year how Sam and Dean are kept in perfect balance through the first 2 seasons. If something is strongly defined for Sam, Dean works in exact opposition and vice versa. This episode has a strong focus on Sam, and his character exposition is mostly delivered TO him by Dean, questioning his new “loyal obedient son” approach.

Of course that’s working in opposition to Sam as Sam swings around to take Dean’s season 1 role, while Dean spends season 2 quite rebellious and fed up and frequently showing little interest in hunting and questioning basically his whole life purpose re: the job.

Which makes me think if they swapped sides on big stuff like that, they also could have swapped sides on “live regular” and Dean’s reactions in that conversation (thinking of swapping) remind me of this conversation from Swap Meat:

 

> DEAN  
>  You ever think that you’d want something like that? Wife, rugrats, the whole nine?
> 
> SAM  
>  [shakes his head ] No, not really my thing anymore.
> 
> DEAN  
>  Yeah.

which was the first indicator of the arc which eventually had Sam packing him off to Lisa for the season 5-6 hiatus. I have a lot of thoughts about the way Dean got emotionally hooked on the idea of Lisa as the perfect endgame and I actually collected all my rewatch note thoughts on it here:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/126363051183/ibelieveinthelittletreetopper-i-wonder-what>

but tl:dr he fixates on her over season 3 and it’s largely a subconsciously planted desire from 3x02 facing him with what he couldn’t have, and the timing with him mournfully contemplating “what should never be” in his life thanks to the whole “going to die in a year” thing. I sort of tracked this thread through all the Gamble season 3 episodes, including Jus in Bello and 3x15 which didn’t even have Lisa in them.

(ETA: to drag out of this post and put here for the sake of a clean argument, also very important that 3x10 emphasises both Dean’s apparent desire for Lisa in a “live normal” way AND in the same sequence, John’s influence on him and his desires. 2x02 coming RIGHT after John’s death and starting with his funeral, I think it’s safe to say there can be some influence on what Dean thinks he should have coming from that direction in the same way Sam adopts the “loyal son” approach. John says in 1x20 he wants Dean to have a home, so the idea of Dean living a normal life is planted BY John as one of HIS desires for Dean too, while Dean spends season 1 talking about wanting to stay together hunting as a family and not thinking they’d quit even if they got revenge.) 

Anyway there’s the whole thing as well in 6x01 where I talk about Lisa and Dean’s time with her as a not quite reality which also harks all the way back to 2x20 (this episode is so ridiculously important) 

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130232794973/i-think-id-like-to-take-you-up-on-that-beer>

… again, “what is and what should never be” applies heavily to the  _real_  version of their relationship. 

All this to say, Dean’s strong sense of what he  _should_  do and the desires he feels he has to have are explored, thoroughly, and eventually put to rest by the end of season 6 with him finally on the other side of them, and I see 2x02 as the first time Dean seriously seems to contemplate it for himself, under the shadow of an episode strongly focused on Sam’s reaction instead.

Anyway, all that in mind mostly just for later parts of the show massively fleshing out parts of Dean’s character and desires in a way season 2 never could on its own, and to explain why Dean’s gay panic could endure all the way to Carver era since he has to kind of put it all to rest 

(2x03, for example, starts a pattern of episodes that goes via the siren episode and which is only positively subverted in 8x13:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/121830579453/paperhearts2k16-elizabethrobertajones-after>) 

to FINALLY get back to 2x20 properly, it occurs to me that if season 2 can be so easily read as Dean’s gay panic season wherein there are obvious characters he reacts to and prominent moments which are now long entered into the annuls of bi!Dean meta… And I think there is a serious narrative of Dean vs identity anyway that season but I think this forms a clear part of it if you’re here for all the bi!Dean stuff… Let’s think about Carmen, Dean’s imaginary, perfect, conflict-free girlfriend. 

Wait, no, let’s glance back up at 6x01. Because after writing that meta about comparing Lisa to Dean’s imaginary girlfriend, I had nothing to talk about in the real rewatch notes for the episode, so I spent the entire thing laughing and shipping him with Sid, his neighbour.

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130232842193/6x01-rewatch-or-amazingly-i-thought-i-was-gonna>

 

> DEAN  
>  Frigging suburbs, man.

(8x08, Carver era at it again :P)

Sid is one of the key differences between 2x20 and 6x01:

 

> Sid:   
>  Come on. You – what, you moved in, what, about a year ago?
> 
> Dean:   
>  Yeah, thereabouts.
> 
> Sid:   
>  So I been buying you beer for a year. And I think that means you owe me a couple of gory details.

In Dean’s wish!verse he has a job, he has a house, he has a  _mom_ , but he has no dudes in his life whatsoever. John is dead, Sam’s off at college, fair enough, but his relationship with Carmen is the only piece of Dean’s internal life we get of outsiders: there’s no workmates, there’s no neighbour… And yet we know Dean gravitates towards male approval (how Gordon gets so deep in his head in one episode in 2x03) and forms strong bonds with dudes. 

You’d think he’d at least have a  _mention_  of his drinking buddies or friends from work, but the alcoholism subtext of 2x20 seems to imply Dean can be a weird lonely drunk who ends up badgering his family and they’re all wearily used to it, rather than any indication he at least semi-constructively blows off steam drinking with friends.

But Dean’s precariously structured inner world, which turns out just to be a dream reflecting some of his most emotionally painful desires, centred on Mary’s not dying as the butterfly effect of the world change but still built around his own expectations and other lesser desires, keeps his life sterile and free of the confusing presence of men who he’d have to deal with their place in his world, when he’s mid-crisis and would have to define his attraction to them… They fundamentally upset the wish!verse and its easy instant emotional gratification: the creeping feeling of wrongness and the burden of the world on Dean’s shoulders is too powerful for the dream but until the civilian deaths push him to act, he was willing to accept the world, even with Sam not being that familiar with him (he would be able to build that relationship back up if he’d stayed, after all) just for the self-sacrificing sake of everyone else being happy. 

At the end of the episode Carmen joins wish!Sam and wish!Mary trying to talk Dean back from waking himself up:

 

> MARY steps away, and CARMEN walks up to him, taking his face in her hands, kissing him.
> 
> CARMEN We can have a future together. Have our own family. I love you, Dean. Please.

promising him the most generic easy heterosexual future ever, where he can have a cool respectable wife, have some kids, the guarantee of being loved in a really normal, boring way. It’s all that “Live regular” stuff from 2x02. And I think it’s the easiness of it and how uncomplicated Carmen is for Dean that calls to him, that even if she’s a shadow of a personality, she can stand with Sam and Mary, and make an appeal that comes across as tempting as the appeals from his most beloved family members. Like, the siren call of heteronormativity or something.

TL:DR I guess, Dean briefly entertaining a fantasy of making out with Andy in his cool van has knock on effects that take six seasons to start unravelling?

 

* * *

 

[and all of this brings us right back to the present where Mary has suddenly walked back into dean’s life](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/and-all-of-this-brings-us-right-back-to-the-present-where-Mary-has-suddenly-walked-back-into-dean%27s-life) [and i think this is going to dredge up some of this again for dean in a way he can finally deal with it in reality](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/and-i-think-this-is-going-to-dredge-up-some-of-this-again-for-dean-in-a-way-he-can-finally-deal-with-it-in-reality) [instead of in the pseudo-realities he’s confronted with in the past](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/instead-of-in-the-pseudo-realities-he%27s-confronted-with-in-the-past) [yes please bring on s12](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/yes-please-bring-on-s12) (via @mittensmorgul)

Yes! I’m not overly fond of the idea that her presence can magically fix everything as even if her death is the source of all the drama in their lives they’ve picked up PLENTY of extra baggage along the way… but I think that 2x20 is again going to prove itself one of the most important episodes ever through season 12 for whatever reasons, and like right after 11x23 I was thinking about how it’s never  _really_  been subverted as such, in the way where at least for how when you re-watched it until the end of season 11 it’s been completely emotionally resonant in an unchanged way, but seeming to give Mary back finally puts some new hindsight on the emotional drama in it that unlike many episodes where later canon makes them softer or changes the way you interpret them, 2x20 has never been “softened” until now, which I think has been part of what makes it such a great, lasting, classic episode.

I think if Mary is honestly back in their lives, it’s going to have to call for a subversion (I can’t imagine her being the sandwich-making quiet sad woman we saw in 2x20, who seems in hindsight to have been based off Dean’s memory of her in 5x16 as that interaction strongly paralleled how she treated him as an adult in the wish!verse… the young!Mary from the time travel episodes suggests she has a lot more personality stored up in there, but she was kind of not technically their mother yet in those episodes, so the way they interact has got to be a blurring of everything we’ve seen so far, really)… I guess the sickly sweet wish!verse suburbia Mary and that life has to be what’s called into question. But I hope there are shades of the episode around, even if it’s just discussion and self-reflection… Even if she’s not like wish!verse!Mary, she’s connected to these themes in Dean’s mind…

I guess the “what’s it like settling down with a hunter” thread from season 11 never ended with an obvious resolution, and that’s also already leaning to a very different sort of balance and subversion of the expectation of “Live normal” and it will be interesting to see where it goes from there and how the discussions of their future are phrased. Hm.

Like every time I mentioned Mary either in this post or the stuff I was reading before linking it, I was going “Hmmmm” thinking about season 12 but I don’t want to speculate more than saying I think it might be interesting :P

also other replies:

[ruiniscrazy](http://ruiniscrazy.tumblr.com/) replied to your post:

> Hah, you mentioned Andy. No one ever mentions Andy. Even though Dean spent the entire episode fawning over him.

I know, right? Dean has a few different sorts of guys who are his type (and pfft Cas somehow or other gets to be all of them one time or another :P) but thinking of Aaron, he’s very much in the same mould *stares hard at the writer of both episodes* I wonder whyyy~ 

but Andy seems designed to tick every box for Dean as we watch all the intro stuff where they’re snooping on him and getting to know him - and Andy even appreciates Dean’s taste in turn by stealing Baby from him and Dean - it’s been a long time but I swear this is how I remember it - is like eventually more like “can’t fault him for that” :P And they both make the same Star Wars joke at different points in the episode!! I don’t believe in love at first sight but come on.

(Actually thinking of Edlund vs Dudes Who Are Dean’s Type, remember in season 7, Ranger Rick who hit both the uniform kink AND lovable stoner trope in one go? I know Dean was stoned on the sandwich too by the time they found him dead but he really seemed to go for the guy despite only a minute of interaction :P)

[f-ckyeahfutbol](https://f-ckyeahfutbol.tumblr.com/)

> The Trickster was 2nd season. Dean was straight up hitting him up.

*clears throat and gestures at all the rambling about Dean having a type* 

I know Sabriel shippers also get a real kick out of that episode, but he did also offer Dean an orgy to lay off the hunt in their showdown, which was all his own custom manifestations :P I’m unclear of the legal grey area of how gay that is.


	2. Why Did Dean Take John’s Death So Hard?

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> This is a random question but I've been wondering why John's death was so hard on Dean? Wouldnt dean have left more free because he didn't have to follow his dad's orders anymore. Or because he was Dean father, of course he would feel that way?

* * *

Season 2 for Dean is a nightmare of the double burden John left him by giving him the “Save Sam or kill him” order, followed immediately by trading his own life for Dean’s. This gives Dean a horrific obligation and probably a sense that John only brought him back to continue the job.

In season 2 he actually IS rebellious and angry about the burden, but carries on doing the job anyway - although resentfully and angrily. I think from Heart onwards are the first episodes he seems at all enthusiastic for the job - those final 3 MotW episode of the season show him slowly coming back to it.

However, 2x20 then comes with this epic metaphor for the obligation John left him, which translates to how he feels, so rather than scavenge up all the quotes from earlier in the season, here’s a case study:

> DEAN  
> All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They’re all dead. And there’s this woman, that’s haunting me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It’s like my old life is, is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn’t want me to be happy. Course I know what you’d say. Well, not the you that played softball but… “So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people’s lives, no contest. Right?” But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? What about us, huh? What, Mom’s not supposed to live her life, Sammy’s not supposed to get married? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? It’s… Yeah…

We’ve known that Dean’s core operating system - in the same way angels are later shown to be programmed to follow certain basic rules - is just “Saving people, hunting things.” If you break down season 1 it’s all Dean taking up the mantle of the family business (literally, by putting on John’s coat, figuratively by taking the journal and using it for further instructions to start with).

Here he questions why he has this burden and as he unloads this all to John’s grave, and directly accuses him that John would tell him the right thing to do (at least, not softball!John but the hunter Dean was raised by) would be to sacrifice this happiness for everyone, addressing the source of his burden, and need to save people and hunt things. 

(I love the filming on it because it has the same broken, overlapping camera work which is used in only a few other moments on the show which show real desperation and almost an appeal to a higher source - the first time is Dean after he loses Sam at the start of Born Under A  Bad Sign but more importantly, Jimmy yelling at Cas in 4x20 and the main parallel to this scene, I think, Cas appealing to God at the end of 6x20, and that parallel completely fucks me up when I watch 2x20 now) 

Anyway, Dean spends the start of season 2 completely fucked up by being brought back (the zombie episode and Crossroads Blues both look at his reaction to John’s deal) while the mytharc also focuses on his unwillingness to tell Sam John’s final message. He even suggests fucking off to Vegas rather than tell Sam, and I think there are several times he suggests they quit hunting throughout the season (Sam is determined to do what John wanted him to do and he never did while John was alive, in his own response to John’s death to willingly take on this burden, mostly because it was slightly less complicated than John asking him to.)

I guess the other part of this would be 2x01; in 4x15 Dean tells Tessa that he hadn’t felt right after being resurrected and that he knew it was wrong and he should be dead, which plays out in season 2 without being a retcon, more like a textual statement clarifying these feelings.

I like the parallel between 2x01 and 2x20 of Dean talking to John where he can’t hear, once because John’s dead and once because Dean is currently basically dead. He won’t remember saying this, but:

> JOHN is sitting by DEAN’S bed; DEAN STANDS NEARBY.
> 
> DEAN  
> Come on, Dad. You’ve gotta help me. I’ve gotta get better, I’ve gotta get back in there. I mean, you haven’t called a soul for help. You haven’t even tried. Aren’t you going to do anything? Aren’t you even going to say anything?  
> (he starts walking around the bed)  
> I’ve done everything you have ever asked me. Everything. I have given everything I’ve ever had. And you’re just going to sit there and you’re going to watch me die? I mean, what the hell kind of father are you?

The comment about giving everything is especially important to the feeling Dean might have when he comes back; even if he doesn’t remember saying this, this is how he feels at the time about John before he dies. John actually then does save Dean, but because of the manner of bringing him back by trading himself rather than it seeming a selfless gesture, instead it asks Dean to give even more of himself.

I think season 3, when Dean has finally given everything he has, and basically achieved what John told him to do, we then see Dean with the weight lifted, and he finally does feel free and out from under John’s orders. He finally made that huge gesture himself to save Sam, and completed the mission of revenge, and basically ticked off everything he ever had to do in 2x22. He’s free to die, in a way, and the borrowed time is just time to kick back and kick ass. He has his and Sam’s problem of unleashing a ton of demons on the world but that’s THEIR problem and not John’s, no longer directly under a burden he put on them. 

I once wrote this completely tangential post to this about Dean in season 2, which sort of did focus a little on Dean feeling a bit more free in season 2, but of course with the obvious catch that it’s a very fleeting feeling… But it was sort of inspired by the feeling of how Dean did have any of this going on at all? With John dead so Dean has a little space to express himself outside of those expectations…

https://archiveofourown.org/works/16940454/chapters/39806415


	3. 2x14 and 2x15 Parallels (with unintentional Gabriel hindsight)

I watched 2x14 yesterday and 2x15 today, and something which I can't even guess at being entirely intentional even taking the Trickster as face value, is that they ended up with 2 episodes back to back where big players drop in to test the Winchesters against each other.

I think the character of the Trickster always metaphorically served the purpose that having some extra bro drama with Sam and Dean pitted against each other served the themes at the time, and that whether he was going to be important again or not, his character had gravitas (that seems like the wrong word considering his behaviour but in a writing way of stage presence :P) and was shown to be so above their weight class that he is one of the few monsters that ever got away from them.

Of course Tall Tales is _supposed_  to be the lighthearted episode after 2x14 makes “Sam” demand Dean kill him already and Dean resists everything Meg throws at him in staying compassionate to his brother. The Trickster waltzes in and makes them _actually_  want to kill each other for hilarious non-plot related reasons and in that silly sibling way where you just say you want to kill them but haha that’s the actual plot of this show. Honestly his methods seem almost like they could have been more successful - somewhat like the Siren playing them in 2 seasons time but without even needing to chemically addle them, just following them around making them more and more angry with each other until the family feud bubbles out into full flame. Meanwhile Meg was attacking the sacrificing burden aspect of their relationship on the epic mytharc level rather than the mundane character level.

Obviously with hindsight this is round one of three of Gabriel screwing with them to figure them out (and how screwed he (and the rest of the world) may be based on their behaviour) and he’s probably been hanging around making silly cases here there and everywhere hoping to get them to come investigate him ever since the main plot started up in season 1 for all we know... I like to think he was baiting various small hunts that could turn into total nonsense just waiting for them to pick up on it. A little trail of destruction and this was how far he had to go to get their attention...

Anyway, to the actual point of this post. With hindsight even more than looking at it straight on as presented, we have these very big players following them around and initiating interaction in two episodes in a row: knowing Gabriel had come out of complete hiding to at least in disguise poke around the main mytharc guys, and Meg and her connection to Azazel and knowledge of potentially the whole endgame (we never learn how much she was privy to about Azazel's plans but acted as his main agent in season 1 at least). It gives them a really claustrophobic sense of all eyes being on them that isn’t really there until, like, season 5 when you have all the hindsight and know Gabriel for who he really is, making this one of the more dramatic changes of the meaning of an episode with later canon. Meg still seems to have just come to screw around with them, given we don't get any character exploration of her for multiple seasons to know what she was really after, but she could also have been still acting on orders or a less reckless initiative than she gives, as she knows the details of what John's last order to Dean was, and is attempting to escalate the mytharc of the season. In the wider scheme of season 2, since 2x12 they’ve got Victor hunting them, and Gordon was hunting them earlier too, in 2x10, giving the Roadhouse subplot by this time a low key fear of who knows what other hunters might come after them even if he has been stopped.

Somehow retconning in Gabriel to be watching them and fucking around with them is like the final straw to just making it so every episode is about the universe watching them, I guess waiting with baited breath to see if they do all the stuff they’re foretold to do, and sure enough they do and go into season 3 which is the part where the rollercoaster stops clicking up and goes into freefall for the apocalypse.

I’m just reflecting on how this is a pretty good retcon, as retcons go, because of the way it substantially changes the story but in a way which still fits perfectly with the rest of the story around it and even adds to the themes and expands on the original sense of unease from this season.


	4. What Did Mary In The Djinn Dream Think of Dean and How Does That Relate To Mary In Season 12

**2x20**

I just think it’s weirdly tragic how Dean comes to crash on his mom’s couch, get sandwiches made, mow her lawn… He’s kind of imposing on her and the joke in this episode is he’s acting like an overgrown teenager who never got to do basic kid things with his mom (I mean we know she made him sandwiches - that’s about ALL she did for him for 11 seasons of the show :P) She asks Dean,

> MARY Sweetie, I–I… Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled you are… hanging out here… all of a sudden. But uh… shouldn’t you be at work?

And it does sound like this is all a bit alarming to her, maybe not just because she’s worried about Dean (because they all seem to be) but he has pretty much just invaded her life and begun demanding a ton of comforts from her.

I think this sort of exact thing is what the real Mary feared in season 12, the way Dean could easily have dumped his entire emotional burden on her to make himself happy, and it’s making me all the more appreciative that in 12x02 they nip that in the bud with her rejecting doing homey things for them, by picking up fast food they could have got themselves any time, and confirming that all of Dean’s memories of her cooking was based on a lie that she could pass off being a cook with pre-prepared food, especially in Dean’s lingering memories.

Watching this episode from Dean’s POV is tragic as it always was. Watching it from Mary’s episode and seeing Dean lumber into her life and imagining this whole thing as her actual NIGHTMARE, it’s horrifying, especially when you think about the grief and shock piled on her in the first couple of episodes. Seeing how MUCH Dean needs her, how vast this hole is inside him for Mary, the way she bolts is deeply understandable to me, when I look at this from her perspective. 

(Like, yeah, it sucked for Dean, and if they were doing this like a family that knows the first thing about having its shit together she’d have come up with a more halfway arrangement which could have kept them at a safer distance without cutting them out entirely, while they searched for a family therapist that wouldn’t ask too many questions… :P But anyway this post is not from Dean’s POV which is why I cropped him out of it. That and gif sizes. I worry about that guy too much, this is a Mary post :P) 


	5. Some More Thoughts On Mary’s Characterisation in Season 12 vs 2x20

2x20.

I don’t know if there’s really words for the enormity of season 12 and Mary vs 2x20.

2x20 stands on its own utterly in the sense of her characterisation and what it says about her, because it isn’t Mary, it’s Dean’s DREAM of Mary.

What I find fascinating with 12x22 is that we see something very similar to both 5x16's heaven memory and this same vision of domesticity which started out defining her early in the show that we see here in 2x20, is Mary’s own dream of herself TOO. It creates a new layer where the character of Mary the mother in all the different ways that we see her, is performing!Mary to match performing!Dean.

In 12x02 she rejects that concept in the show's symbolism with joking she never made pie and that it was always shop bought, trying to make a light moment of disappointing Dean in a way we know is very symbolically linked to his entire concept of Mary, and of homemaking and comfort in general. In 5x15 Karen Singer makes millions of pies in her own moment of obsessive domesticity - she just can't stop baking since she got back! This same sort of dark pit of Angel in the Kitchen coding is both firmly attached to Mary, and heavily criticised in the text, consistently since the start, though with extremely varying degrees of success or nuance in the portrayal, which I would argue is a major cause of some of the fandom's issues with her character.

In 12x22 we see her pull a pie out the oven for Dean as the pay off to the season’s pie subtext, which had largely been joking around before getting deadly serious here. This is Mary in her safest place just acting as Mom to her kids but putting on this fake horrible Mary who ignores the real needs of her kids - the living Dean who is in her dream trying to get her attention - but can make the memory of him a sandwich and put a (shop bought) pie in the oven for him. 

I think what’s amazing is that Mary’s projected performing!Mary is used so well in 12x22 because it’s at least… 4 different Mary’s that we have seen through the show, all combined for this final criticism and exposé on her character. Pilot!Mary and 5x16!Mary who are about the same person but one we see with the narrative playing innocent and the audience having no idea she’s nothing else, and one Dean sees/remembers as being nothing else but at least remembering her for himself so she’s caught somewhere between being a projection and an accurate memory that Heaven reconstructed for him to the finest detail. And she’s 2x20!Mary, the Mary she and Dean wish she was, and that we see VIVIDLY here from the POV of Dean who has no idea what else she could be than this, but in 12x22 she’s trying so hard to reject being anything other than this performed!Mary, even if it means squeezing out of Dean’s painfully tight grip on her arm to carry on ignoring that there’s anything else below the surface.

And then of course you have that in 12x22 she is literally hiding behind a projection so she’s Mary’s projected Mary, and we know there’s another Mary underneath, and in that episode it’s so so beautifully illustrated by the Mary in her dream refusing to shed a tear or react, but the unconscious, true Mary sitting tied up in the bunker is crying on her behalf.

What I find truly wonderful is how this is a shared thing with Dean - that they both have these projections, these true and false versions of themselves. And in the dream, Dean sheds so many tears. But we see on the outside, the battered Dean who blew himself up escaping the Bunker with literal grenades, taking the emotional grenades to blow down the walls in Mary’s head, ISN’T crying and it’s not until he wakes up that he’s an obvious emotional mess trying to deal with going from one soft 100s of manly man tears shed encounter to kill or be killed with Ketch, another facet of performed!Dean as they were paralleled in 12x14, and of course he paralleled himself to Mary over and over in the surrounding episodes.

Just… season 12 set out from the outset to shatter performing!Dean and it wasn’t subtle about it from the get go. 12x11 might be the key episode in proving that there’s a Dean under there that is a very different personality without sacrificing any of the badass points, to the very last drop of Dean being Dean. And yet, so soft and sweet in how he acts and treats people when he has no idea who he is MEANT to be, because for Dean that’s not just a perception of self, but almost the first thing to go (forgetting his false identities from the night before) is who HE thinks he is meant to be, and tries to act as.

I think 2x20 has this lasting effect which has helped ruin the reaction to Mary season 12 in the sense of creating negativity about her behaviour (general issues with female characters fandoms as a whole appear to always have aside) because it was the longest time that “Mary” spent on screen as “Mary” rather than past!Mary who was a lot more feisty but didn’t have Sam Smith’s face, and performed!Mary as the soft, nurturing Mother Mary (as 12x12 astutely labelled her) is such a compelling image it’s not hard to see the desire to have that person in the story. Even in past episodes when we see Mary with her own agency she was always more confusing, interesting and ultimately NOT this person.

Shattering the perception of this perfect Mary early in season 12 paved the way for shattering the perceptions about Dean as well, because of the ways in which they are linked and the deeply personal way their stories relate to each other.

Coming back to 2x20 after watching season 12, I can feel season 2 Dean’s pain about her, I can see her in the past as a beautiful point of light in his life. But even after watching 4x03/5x13 she feels empty. And now she seems like this perfect porcelain hollow empty shell of a person. She has character continuity from the broken, complex version of herself that only ever WANTED to be this person but had too much baggage to get there without demon deals and bloodshed and then a tenuous hold on being that person but even then she never learned to cook, and went hunting on the weekends instead. Mary been a real person for a while on the show but only when you look beyond the facade and I think in a way 2x20 suckered us all in for a while, that there was a Mary like this out there when even from her 2nd appearance in 1x09 the idea that she was innocent of their world and problems was challenged. This was ALWAYS performing!Mary, and season 12 broke her, and then it used breaking her to break the hugest crack into Dean’s facade we’ve ever had.

I think Dean’s arc in season 12 was truly about this as the main thing he dealt with, and I think the events through the season weighing him and Mary together and displaying Dean for us all to see in the episode with the title literally telling us to regard Dean, make the case that this season was enormously about this sort of thing, that this was what Mary had been brought back for, what he ‘needed most’ and all that stuff. Because just watching Dean go up to that door and see Mary like this, in the obvious backwards and subverted mirror of 11x23/12x01 and their re-meeting, has completely broken my heart, because the Mary I was so excited to see in season 12, the Mary I absolutely adored watching being deconstructed and broken down and built back up (all in line with what was happening to Dean), is absolutely nowhere to see here. She could be a different person. She could be someone who walked in off the street. She has Mary’s face but I don’t even recognise her in this soft glow with her shuffling around sweetly, responding to Dean’s whims on cue every time. She has the least agency in this episode of anyone because she’s what Dean’s wish is built around, and for him to want to stay she has to be the most blandest, easiest, miserably performed performing!Mary ever, and I think the real thing would probably want to KILL her creepy blank doll doppelganger that Dean’s subconscious conjured.


	6. Dean’s Appeals to his Parents for Messing Him Up: 2x20 edition to go with 12x22

> DEAN   
> All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They’re all dead. And there’s this woman, that’s haunting me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It’s like my old life is, is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn’t want me to be happy. Course I know what you’d say. Well, not the you that played softball but… “So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people’s lives, no contest. Right?” But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? (begins to cry while talking) What about us, huh? What, Mom’s not supposed to live her life, Sammy’s not supposed to get married? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? (pause) It’s… (Dean’s lips tremble. Silence. We hear the sky rumbling. Tears begins to falls on DEAN’s cheek.) Yeah…

I quote this about 100 times a month anyway when talking about Dean but I would just like to put in one place that 12x22’s speech to Mary is the counter parallel to this, John is dead, in an AU wishverse thing here so has nooo way of hearing or even giving Dean the CHANCE to ask him to see him. Mary seems to be a blank wall to it at first and Dean gets to tell her he hates her but she is also receptive and listening and finally SEEING him, and so when he vents to her, about the shit hand life has dealt him, and everyone he loves, SHE can respond.

And I think this is part of the brilliance of 12x22 and why it utterly sinks into every part of the show. Because I have been dragging out this speech to explain this that and the other about Dean’s burden, the weight he feels, the way hunting drives him and maybe he hates it, maybe he’s just miserable about how it trashed their lives… There’s so much in this speech and it’s such a horrible moment, talking to John’s grave. It always reminds me of 6x20 and Cas talking to God at the end and getting no answer and no advice and ending up taking on a massive burden/bad choice that would have cataclysmic consequences for himself and the world, and takes seasons to clear up for him, just as this is the lead up to Dean selling his soul which means hell which means first seal which means Lucifer which means apocalypse and blah blah blah. Bad choices and seemingly impossible odds, and a parental figure who can’t or won’t listen and isn’t there to see and guide and help.

Dean yells at John twice in season 2 venting his frustration, in 2x01 as a spirit:

> DEAN  
> Come on, Dad. You've gotta help me. I've gotta get better, I've gotta get back in there. I mean, you haven't called a soul for help. You haven't even tried. Aren't you going to do anything? Aren't you even going to say anything?  
>   
> I've done everything you have ever asked me. Everything. I have given everything I've ever had. And you're just going to sit there and you're going to watch me die? I mean, what the hell kind of father are you?

(and he doesn’t remember it when he wakes up) and in 2x20 in the djinn dream. Both times John can’t hear him - because Dean is deadish or John is totally dead and buried. Absolute communication barriers 100 miles high.

In 12x22 Dean gets to unburden to Mary, and it’s vaguely superficially similar to especially 2x01 because they’re both in the room and Mary is ACTING like she can’t hear Dean, letting him pour everything out, including almost never/unheard of criticism of his parent in question. In 2x01 by both not letting John hear and taking away Dean’s memories it’s just for us to know how Dean truly feels and he gains absolutely no catharsis. But in 12x22 Mary CAN hear and he asks her to see him, and she repeats his phrasing when she wakes up and they’re talking again, proving she heard everything and is truly seeing him now.

Beautiful dead opposite moments to each other :’)


	7. John died the same time as real canon in 2x20 and what that means

One other thing from 2x20:

([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D42%26pid%3D40629%23top_display_media&t=NWJkMjRiYzA1NzE3YWYxYWI1OTU2N2M5NmM2Y2ZkNzJiMjhjMDQ2ZixRQnM1akpRdA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F149382164168%2Foh-that-was-the-other-thing-maybe-there-are-a&m=1)) John only died in 2006, same as in the real timeline. He probably died the  _same_  time he died in the real timeline. Wishverse!Winchesters have been dealing with John’s death exactly as long as the real ones did.

I’m not sure we’ve ever really talked about this? Like, what the Wishverse Winchesters are actually thinking/feeling?

Wishverse!Sam was off at college and even in this world I can imagine him and John fighting. Dean’s working at a garage in Lawrence, presumably the SAME one John did, and we know from 4x03 John worked there because HIS (step)father did, so Dean is following in the family business exactly like he does in the real timeline, and the real fake Dean probably has much the same hangups as Dean does about the family business and the very complicated relationship to Sam leaving it to go to college, which is magnified 1000x in John. Considering they only speak at family events, Sam and Dean probably are on a similar sort of divide. Obviously main canon Sam and Dean were closer before Sam left, and it was more complicated even if they didn’t talk for longer, while in Wishverse, Sam is amused, unsurprised, but a little eyerolling about Dean’s not-drunk call when he phones right after waking up. 

Sam probably has his baggage about John, but he’s been out of the family home for at least the ~2 (3?) years we know he was at college before the show starts, and the 2 years of season 1 & 2 carrying on uninterrupted, so Sam probably barely spoke to John for 3 years before his death, and had been living out of that home environment, however it may have been with no hunting and Mary there, Sam was still inspired to leave and go far, and aim high - even if it’s less of a leap from their canon lives, it’s still setting a goal that takes him far from home, and he and John are shown to be personality clashes.

Then Mary is recently a widow. We only see her really reacting to her sons - I think Sam coming home and bringing Jess for her birthday, the first since John died, and announcing their engagement, is clearly a sort of get Mary out the house and give her something new to be happy about. 

And then there’s Mary and Dean. Aside from the college professor which I think was just hammering in the point, all the accusations about Dean drinking come from Dean’s family. Wishverse Dean is clearly portrayed as fucked up and our Dean dropping into his “place” is uncharacteristically cheerful and not-drunk. He’s trying to mend ties with estranged family (Sam) and showing up erratically in places he’s not expected to be. Carmen’s the only one who isn’t phased by this, treats him like he’s acting normally, and understands - maybe it’s more like understands what Dean is supposedly going through.

If John only recently died, then Dean probably went through a civilian version of the season 2 misery, and probably wishverse Dean before that was not exactly as messed up, and maybe more like season 1 Dean on his good days where he was still hopeful and mostly drank for fun. If he’s already moved in with Carmen then they’ve probably been together longer than that, so she’s been with him through the whole thing, and presumably a bit more on top of his problems than his family, who he wouldn’t want to burden because this is Dean, but with Carmen:

> DEAN is sitting on the sofa, thinking, furrowed brow. CARMEN offers him a beer.
> 
> DEAN My favorite. I guess you know me pretty well.
> 
> CARMEN ‘Fraid so. You all right?

… So from Mary’s perspective, after John dies, Dean becomes a mess, probably starts avoiding her, and then shows up out of the blue apparently drunk enough to have forgotten huge details - you know, like he’d been drinking to forget them. And he’s SAD. He has tears in his eyes as he talks to her. He’s finally come home and is making weird demands of her attention almost like he’s a kid again… 

So she mothers him.

([x](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/123063483714/dean-appreciation-week-6-favorite-episode-say)) And maybe, this weird approach to talking about it again and Dean reaching out to her is the beginning of actually healing? So she lets him mow the lawn because he’s trying again.

(But accidentally seems to imply he’s also just hanging out there because he lost his job, but if he hit rock bottom, she’ll be there for him even if he doesn’t want to tell her yet)


End file.
